


they say it feels like flying

by sparklyjimin



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, crying momo, honestly idk what this is, hurt momo, jeongyeon to the rescue, momo is such an amazing dancer and honestly i'm jealous, not particularly angsty, sad momo, these tags are a mess, they're all so damn cute, what is love is the best damn concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 18:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14624742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklyjimin/pseuds/sparklyjimin
Summary: sometimes, momo feels as though she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. the other members are always there to help her carry the burden





	they say it feels like flying

**Author's Note:**

> what is love is forever a bop and i love hirai momo a lot

Momo knows how lucky she is to be here today. Realistically she knows better than the other members, considering the debacle that was Sixteen (the others all know how much her self-confidence had suffered after she'd been eliminated, and by now, know exactly how to care for her when she has a bad day with it - especially Nayeon and Jihyo). She knows that the others all practise hard and that they are all equally deserving of their positions in the band. And yet she can't help but feel as though she was the weak link between them. She had been thrilled to debut as the main dancer - dancing was her passion, what she spent much of her time devoted to - and for a while after debut, she'd been living on a sort of high.

Unfortunately, it hadn't lasted as long as she would have liked. Once the band was official, training and practises became a lot more vigorous, and the other members very quickly began to catch up with her dancing skills. Their dancing had to be on par with each other's for comebacks. Of course, Momo was definitely proud of them - of the maknae trio, who had struggled to keep up at first, of Mina, who was quick to catch on despite her years of ballet, of Nayeon, Sana and Jeongyeon whose strengths at the beginning had been almost entirely in singing rather than dancing, and of Jihyo who had trained for so long and tried so hard to finally debut. Soon enough they could follow her cues for choreography more and more quickly and accurately. Their trainer for this What is Love comeback was shining particular praise on the main vocals (Nayeon, Jihyo and Jeongyeon) for their improving dancing, while dismissing Momo almost completely. He could be a little... harsh, to say the least.

She was trying. She really was.

"Mina, that was amazing - everyone, do you see what she did there? Do you think you can all copy her?" The trainer beamed at Mina, who smiled shyly.

And - of course Momo could manage that, she'd been the one to teach Mina it in the first place. But she could hardly argue with somebody in such a position of authority. Plus, she was actually happy with how much Mina's dancing had improved over the years. She deserved the compliment. And so she kept her mouth shut and obliged in repeating the motion with the rest of the group.

"Hirai Momo!" the trainer snapped. "Are you sure you're the main dancer here? You look almost like you've never seen this choreography before in your life! Do it again!"

Momo nodded and looked down at the floor, eyes burning. She refused to let herself cry, not here, not in the middle of dance practise. She blinked back the unshed tears and swallowed the lump forming in her throat and repeated the move, albeit with a little less confidence than she had done previously.

By the end of the practise, almost two hours later, Momo had been made to redo that part of the dance by herself four times until the trainer was satisfied that the rest of the group could join back in. Four times didn't really sound like much, but Momo was a perfectionist. She had devoted her life to dance, and thrived off compliments directed towards it - she wasn't self-centred by any means, but liked to have some sort of reassurance that she was doing well.She had built her life around her ability to dance and now this trainer was pulling down any semblance of security and self-assurance she might have been feeling. 

The trainer left swiftly, leaving the girls to pack up their things in their own time. Her ears were filled with a strange buzzing as she fought against the potential onslaught of tears, and she was packing away her clothes and towels into her bag so violently that she didn't even notice Chaeyoung's presence behind her until the younger girl caught hold of her elbow. She whirled around swiftly and fixed a somewhat watery smile onto her face in the hopes that it would fool Chaeyoung into believing whatever lie she could come up with when questioned.

At least, that's what she was planning, but all it took was Chae looking at her with those big dark eyes and softly whispering "Unnie..." for her to feel the mask slip. She didn't even register that she was crying until Chaeyoung reached out and swiped the pad of her thumb gently under her eye. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt herself start to sob. It took less that a second before the rapper's arms circled around her (for once she was glad of their similar heights, because it meant she could easily hide her face in the juncture of the other's neck). Another voice said, "Oh my God, Momo-yah," and then the body that the voice belonged to - she thought it was Jeongyeon - plastered itself to her side and began smoothing her hair carefully. 

She lifted her head and smiled tearfully, moving to wipe her eyes but not managing to get there before Sana - who she hadn't even noticed was still in the room - armed with tissues. She nodded her thanks and Sana smiled back warmly, not trying to hide the anxious look on her face as she hovered. Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung both managed to unstick themselves from her sides, and while she immediately missed their warmth, she was glad that they knew to give her space. They knew, as did Momo herself, that if she got too involved in hugs then she would get more emotional purely due to the closeness of her members and thinking about how close she had come to losing them on Sixteen. 

"What was that, Momo-yah?" Jeongyeon asked, not unkindly, still loosely holding onto her wrist in order to ground her and prevent a complete breakdown. 

Momo blinked away the last of her tears and noticed, once her vision was no longer so blurred, that the room was empty apart from the four of them. "Where - "

"Nayeon, Mina and Jihyo are seeing the managers about something, and we've sent Dahyun and Tzuyu on a snack hunt just to keep them out of the way," Jeongyeon said quickly, in the cool, no-nonsense tone she was known for in the dorms, mostly when the maknaes were misbehaving. "Momo - "

"I know," Momo sighed heavily, cutting her off effectively. "I just..." She paused, trying to formulate the right words, and eventually just managing a choked, "What if I'm not good enough?"

It was quiet, but the three other girls in the room all heard it. For a second there was a painful, resounding silence, and then they all broke out in protest at the same time. She could  _see_ the fire in Chaeyoung's eyes as she began to rant about their new trainer, and was reassured by the younger's fierce need to protect the other members despite the fact that they were almost all older than her. Chae was more than capable of looking after herself and Momo had no doubt that if it came to it she would look after her, too - in fact, as Jeongyeon shushed her (with a faint smile on her face), she was pretty sure she heard the rapper mumble darkly something about  _strangling_ , which honestly didn't worry her as much as it should have done.

"This  _is_ about the new trainer, right?" Sana asked, managing to stop hovering around the group long enough to dart forwards and take one of Momo's hands in her own. 

"Yeah," Momo managed faintly, head swimming a little. "I couldn't get the choreo down - I don't know what's  _wrong_ with me - the trainer's right, I can't dance, and I don't know if I should even be here if that's - "

"Don't even finish that sentence," Sana snapped abruptly. It was a shocking change from the younger who was known, generally, for her innocent and bubbly personality. Momo felt herself doing as she was told without really processing it, her sentence trailing off into nothing. "You were made the main dancer for a reason, okay? That hasn't changed. You were the best dancer when we debuted and you're still the best dancer now; one bad day and one person's negative opinions don't do anything to change that fact." 

"She's right," Jeongyeon nodded. "Momo-yah, we wouldn't be anywhere if we didn't have you on our team. God only knows where our dancing would be, but certainly not where it is now!"

Momo shifted to lean her head against the older girl's shoulder and the other squeezed her wrist lightly in response, just as the door to the practise room swung open to reveal Dahyun and Tzuyu. 

"You'd better appreciate these snacks because we walked for like fifteen minutes just to find them," Dahyun announced loudly. "They moved the snack machine, would you believe it?" 

Momo stood up and looked round at her dongsaengs, smiling more now - Tzuyu, ever the polite maknae, smiled back, but Dahyun brought a certain comedic presence to a room that the other members always struggled to rival, and she watched in amusement as Dahyun winked at her across the room and then threw a packet of something at Chaeyoung, hitting the other girl directly on the back of the head. As Momo moved to grab her bag, Sana caught hold of her arm. "Are you feeling better, unnie?" 

And she was genuine when she replied with "Much, thanks," before catching a flying bar of chocolate which, based on the was their youngest was giggling, had probably come from Tzuyu. She looped her bag over her shoulder before retaliating by swatting her on the back of the legs, and was rewarded by the other member's peals of laughter. 

She was glad she could make them happy. And, they made her happy too, she thought as Nayeon, Mina and Jihyo entered the fray. Even if she wasn't feeling good at dancing, she was confident they'd always be there to support her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i recently watched sixteen and got inspired and this was the result


End file.
